Prevalence of Gifted Gamers
Hi all, this will be my first post and to introduce myself I wanted to do a quick excursis into the realm of gifted gamers. I’m currently studying gifted education and I thought it might be interesting to apply some of these theories to the gaming world.
The first question I hope to address is, how many gifted gamers are there?
According to wowprogress.com there are currently 54765 guilds that have cleared at least 1/12 ICC 10man and 43647 guilds that have cleared at least 1/12 ICC 25man. Assuming a 25m guild has on average 35 raiders, and a 10man guild 20 raiders and that all 25man guilds also raid 10man occasionally, this represents 1.75 million raiders in the world. Lets add a few casuals who may not have reached that far yet and round it up to a nice 2 million world of warcraft players. (keep in mind this doesn’t include china who are still playing TBC unfortunately!)
Now the question is, how many of these WoW players are actually talented. Stealing from psychology the definition of giftedness refers to the top 10% of the population (Françoys Gagné, 2003). However, current understanding of giftedness indicates that there are various levels of giftedness. Feldhusen (1993) indicates the following statistics for the ranges of giftedness and I have used these to extrapolate the estimated number that currently play wow:
| Level | Prevalence | Estimated # in WoW |
|---|---|---|
| Mildly gifted | 1:6 to 1:44 | ~200,000 |
| Moderately gifted | 1:44 to 1:1,000 | ~20,000 |
| Highly gifted | 1:1,000 to 1:10,000 | ~1,000 |
| Exceptionally gifted | 1:10,000 to 1:1million | ~50 |
| Profoundly gifted | < 1:1 million | ~2 |
Let’s compare this to the current number of players that have defeated the Heroic: Lich-King encounter:
- 25 man – 218 guilds = 7630 people
- 10 man – 792 unique guilds = 15840 people
- total – 23470 people
Hence, it seems this encounter is a good measure of identifying the moderately gifted among us. Well done blizzard in implementing a difficult encounter.
Do you think you belong on this scale? If so where would you place yourself and why?
I intend to run a theme on ‘gifted’ gamers, up next we’ll look at what a gifted gamer ‘looks’ like and whether the image above represents a true image of them.
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There are no logical relation beetwen finishing heroic ICC 25 and being gifted. Keep studying gifted education you have many work to understand the point yet.
Well I was trying to start out with a simple post and build up the detail.
To clarify, what I’m really discussing above is talented gamers under the Gagne model, not giftedness.
There is a correlation between achievement and giftedness and there is also a correlation between achievement and talent. Defeating heroic lich king is an achievement (and I don’t mean in the WoW way). I am not claiming all that do this are gifted, nor that there are no other gifted players. Simply that the subset of WoW players that has defeated H LK will contain an increased proportion of the better gamers. This is a correlation.
We are not discussing intellectual giftedness.
I’d love you to actually defend your claim though as to me there does seem a logical link between ‘doing something difficult’ and ‘being talented in that area’.
You seem to be addressing only the talented raider, not the talented gamer. I think that you may have forgotten the gifted gamer that specialises in other areas; such as arena, PvP or the accumulation of in-game gold.
There are also players who, through no fault of their own, never get the chance to raid end-game content due to their schedules and real life commitments.
I understand that you have to look at a certain area, but unless you define your study to ‘gifted raider’ rather than ‘gifted gamer’ then that certainly does not and should not preclude the specific talents of all the non-raiding players.
~McRaffles
Interesting reading your article and the comments so far. Would be interested to hear yours/peoples thoughts on what qualifies as excelling or achieving in this game.
Is the best measure simply present content endgame raiding progress? Is it your achievement score? Is it your arena rating? Is it your amount of gold or ability to generate it quickly?
How about a broad spread of all of the above over a long period of time? It would be interesting to get data on all of this and look at the kinds of players that are in the upper end of the spectrum in the largest number of areas.
@McRaffles – I agree (obviously) about the ‘talented gamer’ component. I think part of what I consider a good player to be, though, is a deft communicator and negotiator.
On most server’s there are pugs and guilds that raid most times during the day so if you’re committed I think it’s not really a stretch.
If a player genuinely doesn’t have the playtime hours, though, then they’re a casual player anyway. Which means you insufficient opportunity to qualify as gifted or otherwise in this case.
Will be very keen to see what further discussion comes from this and where future articles on the topic are headed!
So I can move out of defile / fire / things that make me go ouch. Also need to find 9 or 24 other people that can do this in a boss fight for me to be considered “gifted”. I must admit that i prefer achievements that I can do by myself without relying on other people, because that’s where things tend to go wrong. People lag, people dc etc and not just on lich king, even the more relatively simple achievements like “safety dance” or “shocking” require you to be in a group that is both competent and paying attention. If i could solo these things i would, but i need to rely on others in a raid group to get it done.
I wouldn’t label myself as a gifted or talented player, but gosh darn it I am stubborn and reasonably persistent. My ability to keep bashing my head against the brick wall of wow is my greatest strength, not my button pushing abilities or being in a high end guild that clears all content.
I would also agree with the sentiments that there are probably a lot of gifted gamers who simply aren’t playing with only other gifted gamers, just as I imagine there are many gifted students that don’t really go out of their way to only be at schools for the gifted. Both have varying reasons, of course.
Not everyone likes achievements, not everyone cares about heroic modes, not everyone likes to PvP, not everyone likes arena (in fact, the overwhelming majority of players DON’T like arena even being in the game), and on and on. I would consider myself in the mildly gifted area of gamers, if only that I often perform better-than-average, but I’ve also been playing games for a very long time.
How would you decide a gifted gamer from a practiced one? The percentage of the population who is intellectually gifted may be very small, but I’m sure there’s a much larger portion of the population than the gifted ones who are contributing and achieving things that are very difficult to ascend to.
I would imagine someone who’s a gifted gamer is just someone who picks things up faster than others, not necessarily the people who’ve “achieved the most.” I’d bet a pretty hefty sum that the smartest people in the world are not CEOs, presidents, and leaders (often to the contrary, actually – charismatic and smart do not go hand in hand), just as I would say some of the best gamers are probably not the ones doing the hardest things available.
I think you have an interesting concept in your article, but there are so many X factors to consider, like whether gifted gamers hang out with other gifted gamers (as mentioned – you may never die to giant fires, but what if your 2 healers do, so you wipe often?), or what they enjoy doing in the game, or if they even feel competitive enough to try and stand out as a better gamer than others.
Interesting post, and comments.
As others have pointed out, there is definitely a flaw in correlating current raid accomplishment with personal giftedness. The whole raid group is obviously the most important factor in progression, and there are a variety of circumstances/reasons that a more ‘gifted’ player may raid in a relatively less ‘gifted’ group.
Really going on a tangent/stretch here but I wonder if some of the imbalance in raid group composition is related to the Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s an interesting concept, imo.
I agree with almost all of these comments.
I’m glad I’ve got you all thinking about just what constitutes a gifted gamer, as that’s where we’re headed next. I look forward to the comments on that post as it seems most of you have some good ideas on the topic.
This is just fascinating. I am not a raider, but I was identified as “gifted” in my school system. My lack of raiding has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with other commitments (family, work, etc.), which is the case with others. Do I think I am good at this game? Yes, I am pretty skilled at playing my main. I have been told that by other raiders during Pugs. Am I gifted at it? No – I don’t know all the classes in and out (yet) like some do. I am not as familiar with the math/theorycrafting as some, and I am most likely not as dexterous as others.
Keep posting – I am intrigued to see where you are going with this.
I think I would classify myself as moderately gifted…though I think it really depends on which aspect of the game you play…for example pvp vs. pve well I’ve played both…I hit duelist and quit with no real desire for gladiator…not quite sure where im going with this but I am much better at pve that being said I also think part of it is privilege and being in the right place at the right time,atm my guild is working on HM lich king and there are nights where I feel like a god and some nights where I feel I was simply lost trying to find my way to the AH when I stumbled into this raid
in my honest opinion…dedication to learn multiplied by time divided by attitude and conditioning=skill
would also like to note…varying between encounters I feel like anyone could do my job,and sometimes I feel like I have the hardest job in the world